Tunnel Vision (12 page)

Take the whole graveyard angle. Now that I might shortly have to be deposited in the earth myself the state of the city
'
s cemeteries was nagging at me. There was a chronic shortage of space, and little or no planning for the future. For all our talk of the afterlife, no one seemed to understand that they were going to have to die first. And death meant bodies. And bodies meant burial. And burial meant (hopefully) graves deep enough to prevent bones floating into nallahs when it rained and graveyards pleasant enough to encourage the odd visit from a visitor or two. The problem was, and it was the thought of the shaadi halls the ambulance would be passing if it continued on its route that reminded me of an argument I frequently had with Saad, the problem was that people needed to understand that death was a business. Just like weddings.

One of our favourite drives took us past the row of brightly lit shaadi halls that lined both sides of one of Karachi
'
s most congested roads.The shaadi halls in that particular neighbourhood made for a queer juxtaposition of the sublime and ridiculous.They all featured the same basic ground plus one construction. There was a lawn.There was a hall.There was a stage.There was a buffet. And there were chairs.The personal touch, the little bit of magic that made each hall unique, was in the giant neon/freon billboard/sculpture that fronted each
‘
marriage garden
'
. In the beginning there had probably been competing flowers arrangements at the entrance, but now the line of halls sought to outdo each other on a totally different level. Saad and I must have driven that route a hundred times, each time finding new amusement in some fluorescent interpretation of love.

A neon-red rose reared triumphantly to the sky, its height signalling a cocky defiance to the concrete which framed it.
I could grow anywhere,
it bellowed to passers by,
I could be in any one of you suckers right now!

Then there was the pale green rocket poised for takeoff, presumably to carry the new couple off to colonize unexplored galaxies through ceaseless propagation. There was a cubist abstraction of multi-hued geometric shapes. A glowing ball that might have been a disco strobe or the meteor that killed the dinosaurs.A giant chicken with one dark eye, a sad (and I liked to think deliberate) reminder of the havoc wreaked on its master
'
s livelihood by the government
'
s
‘
Yes/No
'
pact with the frugal marriage lobby; too much army good, too much qorma bad – one dish for all and no one gets injured in the stampede to the food.

For someone from Machhar colony, this was probably high art. Sophisticated romance. The perfect platform from which to launch what would probably be a very messy, very expensive journey.The halls could accommodate guests that average middle-class homes couldn
'
t, the women didn
'
t have to cook, and no one had to clean up afterwards.

Theoretically, I had posited to Saad, since we
'
re all devout Muslims, we should all get married in mosques.

‘
Hey Ashoo, you know with that collar you look sort of like that European Queen there was a picture of in my history textbook in school. What was her name … Marie Claire? Marie Biscuit? Marc Anthony! Marie Anthony I think. God what is taking this so long!
'
Adil turned to confer with the orderly and the intern and driver up front.

‘
Some bigshot
'
s in Karachi so they
'
ve closed a lot of the main roads,
'
Adil was considerate enough to share with my comatose form, maybe I didn
'
t give him enough credit sometimes,
‘
I wish we could all get out and put your bigwig deterrent plan into action.
'

The bigwig deterrent plan was born of one too many hours spent waiting in a mile-long line at a traffic light as roads were cleared for the imminent passing of the president or prime minister or whichever parasite happened to be in town. It proposed, and it was rough because like all my plans it was conceived, mulled over and verbalized in under ten seconds, it proposed that all the drivers in the line press down on their horns at the exact moment the motorcade was passing. After rolling up their windows first. In the second version, the front line of drivers also pelted the passing motorcade with eggs, rotten fruit, and beggars (if any of the ones that were inevitably around were light enough to toss). That way, the plan theorized, the parasites would learn to avoid the city
'
s roads altogether and simply fly from place to place in helicopters or, ideally, be shot from place to place via cannons. No real politician, and they were all real politicians or aspiring real politicians or they wouldn
'
t be playing the dirty game in the first place, no real politician would willingly, repeatedly expose himself to evidence of public dislike. Their egos couldn
'
t take it.That
'
s why they surrounded themselves with yes men, they needed to feel liked.

I had shared that plan with Saad too. He
'
d suggested a simpler, more humane way to register disapproval was to write a letter to the editor. He had no issues with the horn blowing or the beggar tossing, but he felt throwing eggs was just not right, people starved to death in Karachi.

He was just such a
nice
boy, I
'
d thought. Possibly the first Pakistani man I knew who didn
'
t seem the least bit perturbed that I had emotions or opinions as strong as I did.

If I ever did marry Saad, I thought wistfully as the ambulance lurched into motion, I mean if he ever asked me to marry him, that is if I ever saw him again, maybe we
'
d check if the giant one-eyed chicken was free for the evening …

It was a big
‘
if
'
though. Especially considering his reaction when I
'
d popped the question that morning. There are relationships that thrive on conflict, and relationships that celebrate calm; relationships that nurture the spirit of compromise and relationships that inflame passion. Saad and I had none of the above. What we did have, we almost never discussed. That we felt deeply for each other was recognized, acknowledged, even flaunted for shock value occasionally, but where we were headed (if in fact we weren
'
t simply jogging on the same spot, as my mother had suggested that morning), was never talked about.

That first time I had agreed to have tea with him at the dhaba down the road from our office, Saad had been nervous. It was easy to think of people who had travelled or lived abroad as suave, urbane, somehow more jaded about things like dating than someone who had lived in this big old village of fourteen million people all her life, but the practiced charm I
'
d expected was missing that first day. He even spilt some tea on my shirt as he passed one of the tiny, chipped cups to me. I covered the awkward moment by launching into a diatribe on how sexist it was that the waiter had come to his side of the car instead of to both like he
'
d done for the car next to us. Saad timidly suggested it was out of respect for me. I wondered where the respect was when the same waiter was ogling schoolgirls passing down the road. But it was too early for me to be making a long, passionate speech about sexism, so I asked him if he
'
d deliberately spilt tea on me instead.

‘
Were you marking your territory?
'

He turned an endearing shade of crimson and muttered something about defective cups, then began talking rapidly about the superiority of Kashmiri chai over the common shelf variety. Later, months, later, that M.O. remained constant whenever I probed, delicately of course, into the exact nature of the relationship we obviously had. Stutter. Stammer. Change the subject. I never wanted to push it. Not initially anyway, I was content to simply let things grow at their own pace. It didn
'
t concern me one way or the other whether he was a
‘
catch
'
.

That Saad was a catch was brought repeatedly to my attention by female co-workers. The other women at the factory, most of them secretaries, had never liked me much in the first place. The feeling was mutual. Excluded from their little club because I made no attempt to hide my disinterest in the things which preoccupied them (clothes, jewellery, marriage, gossip), I didn
'
t really care how arrogant they thought I was. But, in the great tradition of women, we all practised an overt, saccharine, civility. When it became common knowledge that Saad and I were an item though, it became apparent that I had inadvertently crossed a line. One or two who had initially responded positively to my clumsy overtures and even had lunch with me, suddenly were always
‘
very busy
'
. Was it jealousy? Did they think I was after the boss
'
s son and associating with me might tarnish their precious reputations? A reputation was all a girl had after all. Would they be nicer if I went up to their table one day and said,
‘
look, he
'
s the one who
'
s chasing me.
'

Probably not, I had decided. They would interpret it as further evidence of my superiority complex.

Since I was ultimately left with no other eating companion option, Saad and I began having lunch together nearly every day. For me, a brown bread, cheese slice and tomato sandwich, or a shami kabab and paratha brought from home. For him, whatever was on the cafeteria menu. Talk about courting gastro-intestinal disaster.

‘
You don
'
t understand,
'
he managed between spooning shit-coloured haleem into his face after I had mentioned it got that consistency because of the cotton wool they put in it,
‘
how much I missed this food when I was in college.
'

‘
You didn
'
t like American food?
'

‘
There is no such thing as American food. Chinese food. Japanese food. Thai, Mexican, Indian, Greek, even Polish food, it
'
s all available there, but it
'
s hard to like anything that can be called uniquely American.Though I guess if the portions are big and the taste is bland, it
'
s American.
'

‘
Big and bland, that certainly sounds American.
'

‘
You
'
ve never been to America have you?
'

‘
No.
'

‘
It has its moments.
'

‘
I
'
m sure. I
'
ve actually been thinking, America should change its name to America Khan.
'

‘
Why?
'

‘
Well it
'
s been acting a lot like an akhrot. If America were a Pakistani, it would be a Pathan don
'
t you think?
'

He gave me a long considering look, then grinned.

‘
This haleem is too good to allow me to address deep thoughts like that. I missed haleem especially.
'

‘
But you
'
ve been back for years. Don
'
t you get desi food at home?
'

‘
Are you kidding? You think my mother could serve curry to her coffee-party friends? It
'
s all salads and pate, truffles and quiche, that sort of thing.
'

I had no idea what quiche was, or pate. I thought he couldn
'
t say
‘
patty
'
properly and was considering why someone with exposure to so many cultures and languages couldn
'
t pronounce it right when he glanced at my face.

‘
You don
'
t know what quiche or pate is?
'

‘
No.
'

‘
Do you know what escargot is?
'

‘
Snails, aren
'
t they?
'
I remembered a long descriptive passage in some novel or the other, scavenged from the secondhand booksellers at Khori gardens in the vain hopes of learning something useful about sex – given that there was little chance of learning anything from Ammi about it. Or had I read about escargot in the condensed book feature in the Readers
'
Digest that we seemed to have a perpetual subscription to? Books. Magazines. Papers. In Urdu and English. That was one thing there had never been a shortage of in our house. That and argument. That was why both Adil and I were fluently bilingual, and fluently argumentative, but there was a slight difference between understanding a word on a page and recognizing it when you heard it.

‘
Tukhumbalanga?
'

Now that was much easier.
‘
Yes.
'

‘
Kacchaloo? Tamatar Cut? Khagina?
'

‘
Everyone knows what those are. Why are you grinning like a monkey at a traffic light?
'

‘
Because it
'
s such a relief to be with someone who isn
'
t obsessed with being something she is not.
'